On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 09:24:41PM +1000, Manuel M T Chakravarty wrote: > Sean Leather: > > On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 03:15, Manuel M T Chakravarty wrote: > > Ian Lynagh: > > > On Mon, Jun 06, 2011 at 03:47:57PM +0100, Malcolm Wallace wrote: > > >> On 6 Jun 2011, at 13:49, Lyndon Maydwell wrote: > > >>> I would be fantastic if XCode wasn't a dependency. ... > > >>> > > >>> Not to detract at all from the work of the wonderful GHC and Haskell > > >>> Platform contributors in any way. For me it would just make it that > > >>> much easier to convince mac-using friends to give Haskell a try. > > >> > > >> The ghc team already bundle a copy of gcc in their Windows distribution, > > >> precisely because it can be fiddly to get a working copy of gcc for that > > >> platform otherwise. I wonder if they would consider the possibility of > > >> shipping gcc on Mac too? (There may be good reasons not to do that, but > > >> let's have the discussion.) > > > > > > I'm pretty sure we aren't allowed to redistribute XCode. > > > > > > As well as gcc and friends, I think XCode also includes various headers > > > and/or libraries that we need. > > > > > > If there is an alternative - especially one that allows us to support > > > multiple versions of OS X more easily - then using it may make sense. > > > > You are right, the Xcode install includes many tools as well as headers etc. > > > > What would be the advantage of including gcc and all these other things in > > GHC? > > > > To simplify the process of installing GHC and to support people with > > versions of Mac OS X older than the most current. We want to spread the > > Haskell love as far as possible. > > The only simplification is that people who haven't got Xcode yet need to > install two packages instead of just one. > > However, for people who already have got Xcode installed, it means that they > get two versions of all the dev tools, headers, etc. Then, compiling a C > file (eg, as part of a Haskell project) by directly invoking gcc or by > compiling it via ghc will use different compilers, headers, etc. That > quickly leads to annoying and hard to debug problems. > > Given that almost every developer on a Mac will be in the second group, you > are not simplifying matters, you are complicating them. > > > Anybody who is halfway serious about developing software on a Mac will have > > Xcode installed anyway. > > > > You could say the same about people halfway serious about developing > > software on Windows. But GHC doesn't require you to install MinGW, Cygwin, > > or Virtual Studio. > > No. A serious Windows dev will have Visual Studio installed. That won't > help with installing GHC at all AND the GHC-bundled Unix tools do not > interfere with Visual Studio in the same way that custom installs of Unix > tools interfere with Xcode. > > > Besides, as Xcode updates are now available from the Mac App Store, > > > > Not for older versions of Mac OS X. > > Well, then get the DVDs bundled with your Mac and install Xcode from those, > or sign up at developer.apple.com and get it there. BTW, Mac users (and esp > devs) upgrade very quickly, much faster than, say, Windows users.
I disagree with the assumption that OS X people are quick to upgrade. The last set of figures I saw on adoption were something along the lines of 15% on 10.6, with almost a third of the users on 10.4 and below, taken from some article I read the other week on the rising wave of OS X viruses and countermeasures. > > I don't think you can compare this with the situation on Windows. > > Microsoft does not distribute a canonical set of Unix tools that all > > developers use. > > > > No, but Cygwin and MinGW are available for free and have been around for a > > long time. Why does GHC bundle MinGW instead of expecting the user to > > install it herself? Convenience? > > Again, this is a different situation. Window's standard dev environment is > Visual Studio, you cannot expect devs to have MinGW installed. Mac OS X's > standard dev environment is Xcode and you can expect devs to have that > installed. On Windows, it's rather hard to collect the environment needed to build libraries compatible with a particular GHC, let alone build a GHC from scratch. The dev-wiki page on how to set up a build environment is huge, referencing ancient tools that are rather bothersome to find. Any typicall installed mingw/msys you might find on developer machines will most probably not be similar enough to be usable. > > I think there is a clear benefit to supporting older versions of Mac OS X. > > Not everybody upgrades at the same rate that Apple releases new versions. > > Indeed, Apple's updates occasionally change architecture requirements or > > break applications, so some people cannot upgrade. > > Most people upgrade quickly on the Mac platform and, anyway, it does not > matter if they have Xcode already installed, which is the case for the > majority of devs. In fact, that majority is inconvenienced by the additional > complexity of different versions of the tools and libraries. Do you have any source for your statement on adoption rates, or is it just extrapolated from people you know? -- Lars Viklund | [email protected] _______________________________________________ Glasgow-haskell-users mailing list [email protected] http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/glasgow-haskell-users
